Moving On
by Chash
Summary: Old soldiers are bad at moving on. Marcus/Ivanova.


Moving On

Fandom: Babylon 5

Pairing: Marcus/Ivanova 

Rating: Err… PG-13?  I dunno.

Summary: Stubborn old soldiers don't move on very well.

Timeline: Normal.  It's been a long time since I wrote that.

Disclaimer: Not mine.  No money for me.

Notes:  The dialogue in the middle is taken directly from "Between the Darkness and the Light."  This is also probably full of comma splices.  At the moment, I don't care.

            At some point, one must give into the inevitable.  Sometimes, there is no hope.  Sometimes, everything is not going to work out how you'd like.  Sometimes, you just have to move on.  

            Marcus Cole has never considered himself one to give up or move on, which isn't really a good thing.  In fact, it's often called "stubborn" and as for not moving on, living in the past simply isn't healthy.  Marcus knows that, because he does it and is not healthy, though it's hard to tell that he's thinner than he should be and doesn't eat right at all, but Dr. Franklin knows he doesn't take care of himself in the least.  That's the death wish again, the good old reliable death wish.  He thought it might be going away, but it turns out he was wrong.

             Marcus used to think of himself as special and unique because, oh look, he had a tragic past.  His brother and his parents and the woman he loved, they're all dead now.  He never really used it for pity, he just used it on himself when he took missions from which most would run.  'Might as well go,' he used to tell himself.  'You don't want anyone else to have to die.  Maybe they've got someone who'll miss them.'

            Joining the Rangers didn't really do anything to cancel out this belief of his, but coming to Babylon 5 did.  Well, coming to Babylon 5 coupled with rather impressive verbal abuse from none other than Commander Susan Ivanova, Marcus's resident reason to live, at least got him off it until he feel in love.

            "All right, Cole, you're going to tell me what this is about," she said to him, about three weeks after he came to the station, when he returned from a mission with two broken ribs and a severe head wound.

            "What what's about, Commander," he asked, calmly.

            "Damn it, I don't care if you're looking to get yourself killed, but taking stupid risks isn't the way to do it!  We're in a war here, two wars, and you're off trying to die!  Save it!"

            "Save it?" asked Marcus incredulously.  "That's what your message is?  That's a new one."

            "I'm not going to tell you not to die, Cole.  Frankly, I don't care.  But we haven't got a whole hell of a lot of people who are really on our side here, and I don't want any of them dying before they have to. Understand?  As soon as the Shadows and President Clark are gone, you can jump out an airlock.  I will shove you out of one myself, if you'd like.  But until then, try to stay alive, understood?  No more of this stupid shit."

            With that, she stormed out of Medlab, presumably to find someone else who needed a talking to.

            At that point, Marcus had already started falling in love with the commander, though not much past the "beautiful woman hormones react" stage.  He listened to the warning partly out of a desire to please her, but more out of a desire to not be castrated.  Everyone who has been at Babylon 5 for more than three days learns to fear Commander Ivanova.

            Come to think of it, his choice of woman might directly relate to his death wish.

            But he isn't going to think about his choice of woman anymore, because it's time to move on from her.  He is acutely aware that she does not love him.  At this point, she at least tolerates him, seems to think of him as a friend, but she does not want his virgin advances.  It's time to cut his loses.

            He puts his hand lightly over her face, watching her eyes move beneath her eyelids, which makes her look exhausted even though she's sleeping it off.

            "You'll never know," he murmurs, then shakes her slightly.  "Did you sleep well" he asks, with a voice that is just too cheerful, even for him.  She must notice.  "Last time you couldn't sleep at all on these things."

            "I still hate them," she replies, her voice not fully awake.  "How long did I sleep?"

            "Four hours," he smiles, relishing the fact that it is not forced, but just right.

            "Four hours?!"

            "We're still forty-five minutes from the target," he points out, "more than enough time to wake up.  You needed the rest," he adds, because he knows she knows he's right.

            "That's the last time I'll ever trust you," she says.  He is aware, horribly, of how much he loves her.  Which means he's supposed to let her go.  And he's going to.  He's going to.

            "Also the first."

            He starts to leave and she puts out her hand to stop him, touching his arm.

            "The last time that we were in this room, you said something to me in Minbari," he tenses, slightly.  "I happen to have an eidetic memory.  It went, uh," she thinks and remembers, easily, letting the words slide off her tongue.  It amuses him to hear he's the most beautiful woman she's ever met.  "You told me it was just a greeting."

            "Yes," he replies, for lack of anything else to say.

            "Well," she is smiling.  Not smirking, but smiling, "in case you hadn't noticed, I've learned a little Minbari since then."

            He wants to say something.  To say he's giving up, to say he's sorry, to say it's true.

            "Thank you," she says, not smirking.  She leaves then, still smiling.  Marcus blinks, considers, and wonders why he's chosen today to give up on her.  Certainly tomorrow or the next day or never would be just as good.

            "You're welcome," he says, in Minbari, though he knows she can't hear him.  And he decides that if she doesn't want to be pursued, then she shouldn't _thank him for that.  _

            He'll put off moving on until tomorrow.

At some point, one must give into the inevitable.  Sometimes, there is no hope.  Sometimes, everything is not going to work out how you'd like.  Sometimes, you just have to move on.           

            Susan Ivanova is not ready to move on, because if there's one alien device in the universe that trades one person's life for another's, then there has to be another one, one that works when one of the parties is already dead.  She'll be damned if she gives up this easily.

            Ivanova isn't sure about love or any of that, because she doesn't like admitting to love, apparently, until it's too late for her to do anything about it, but she's pretty sure she would have sat by Marcus's bed as he died and worried like he did.  And she might have looked in desperation for some way to save him because they are old soldiers with death wishes, the both of them are.  And she's angry with him because he got to die first.  

            And it's even more annoying, somehow, because he did just as she asked.  He waited until the war was over, and then the bastard died, just like that.  Well, the war wasn't quite over, but it was close enough that she wouldn't have felt guilty dying.

            She's not going to let him go, not yet, because they are stubborn old soldiers and she can't bear letting him get the last words, especially not words like "I love you."  They're clichéd and old and painful to hear, especially ringing in her ears like they are now.  So she's not moving on, not yet, because they still have a score to settle, and she's not willing to let him go.

            John and Delenn told her, every once in a while, in quiet, sympathetic tones, that she should just move on and accept what Marcus was offering.

            She was finally ready to take their advice.


End file.
